


all the streets lead to morning

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Action, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Comfort Sex, Episode Related: s02e12 You Are Not Your Own, Friendship/Love, Gen, Gratuitous Worldbuilding, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Episode: s02e14 The Fair Folk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-09 13:57:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12277962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: You miss me when I'm gone, but you don't know how to be close when I'm there.Alec sees the weight of recent events on Magnus, but is stymied by exactly what to do. Going on a mission with Clary provides not so much a solution as a way forward.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rejected title: "the one where Alec accidentally seduces Magnus with breakfast"
> 
> 1) I know Magnus doesn't have cats in show canon but fudging canon for the sake of cats is only right and proper.  
> 2) I'm only armed with the show and the wiki, so I made up some demonological details.  
> 3) The timeline of this show is clearly just so much baloney. I'm stuffing some extra time in between episodes.  
> 4) Episode 2x19 robbed me of an on-screen Alec & Clary team-up, so I fixed that.

*

_Oh, I loved you with the good_  
_and the careless in me_  
_but it all goes back_

— Ben Howard

* * *

The ornery thrum of his phone jogged Alec out of sleep. Scrambling up, then remembering to be quiet, he caught the phone just before it vibrated off the nightstand and onto the bedroom floor. A liberal arm's length away, Magnus hadn't stirred. His hair was a thick shadow on the pale pillowcase, under what ambient light the window let in.

"Nngh," Alec said into the phone. 

"Sorry to interrupt your night off," said Isabelle, much more crisply. "We have a situation in East Village. Lovejoy and Rozmiarek are missing. I sent them to check out that Kuri hive we talked about, but they're half an hour overdue. I can't reach them."

"Yeah, let me, uh, find my clothes." With a sustained sideways peek at Magnus, Alec slipped to the floor. At least sleeping securely on his own side of the bed made a furtive exit easier. "What time is it?"

"1:15 AM." Izzy's voice moved away, and she said something to the side. He used the time to shrug into his shirt and jeans, with little grace but also not much noise. This wasn't the first time he'd snuck out of bed to deal with a midnight emergency; this time the circumstances were a step out of the ordinary.

"Okay. Where do you need me?" Alec had managed his first two weeks as head of the Institute, but he'd left Izzy in charge. She had the situation in hand.

"I'm sending Clary to meet you at Tompkins Square Park. She'll have the hive coordinates. You'd get Jace, but he took a team out earlier."

"Sounds like a busy night." Snatching up his boots, Alec inched to the door. 

"Yours hasn't been?" A teasing lilt entered his sister's voice. All her genuine respect for his boundaries didn't stop her from poking them on occasion, that occasion being on the frequent side.

"Not really." He hooked his thoughts onto the mission. Leaving from Magnus's instead of the Institute meant he couldn't take a standing portal to Manhattan. It was nothing a speed rune couldn't fix.

"I'm going to ask you later," she said, half a threat, half a reassurance. He must've sounded more maudlin than he'd tried.

"I can't get out of that, can I?"

"No," she agreed, cheerful through her focus.

Alec groaned under his breath, more for show, and lowered his voice another dip. "Iz, it's nothing. We're not fighting. I'd tell you if we were."

"Going somewhere?" Magnus sounded muffled, even reaching for lightness. The diffuse light glossed his unglamoured eyes for a second before he blinked them back to their wakeful dark brown. An ingrained habit, Alec had realized.

"Shit, sorry. I didn't want to wake you up."

"I wasn't asleep." A tiny concession there.

Better and better. Alec gave Izzy a brief confirmation that he'd meet Clary in twenty minutes, then cut the call. He weighed the phone in his hand. "A team didn't report back. We're still short-handed after Kaelie's killings, so I should go."

"Of course. Duty calls, no matter the time." Magnus kicked the covers aside like an irritable cat, curling forward over his raised knees.

"Uh, don't wait up or anything. I'll probably have to—"

"Go back to the Institute afterwards. I know, Alexander."

Magnus knew. They'd played out a dozen variations of this conversation ever since Alec began staying over at all regularly. He was technically on call at all hours, and had been summoned in much more inconvenient moments than tonight.

He almost wished for that kind of inconvenience now. The cool expanse of the room between them felt much wider than the few steps that separated him from the bed.

They weren't arguing. That wasn't in question. The evening had been calm, even gentle, though a thorny client request had kept Magnus glued to his arcane tomes while Alec browsed his more mundane books, made more coffee, and slowly endeared himself to the cats. He was even making decent headway with the Chairman, once the yearling kitten had stopped fleeing under the couch every time he came in. Church, for his part, was an ancient and solitary gentlecat, coming and going in the loft at his own undecipherable pleasure.

Alec supposed such quiet spells were part of the whole relationship thing. Something—normal and comfortable. Or that was what it would've been, if not for the strained undercurrent that still lingered, too deep to run dry by itself.

He wasn't an idiot: not much time had passed since Azazel had wrested Magnus from his body and into Valentine's. Inquisitor Herondale and her Downworlder hunt had followed too soon after.

Both of these things had left wounds that had yet to scar. On Magnus, on their still emerging relationship.

The metaphor buckled there. Alec would've known how to set a bone or stem a blood flow. But there wasn't an open cut here, no plain fracture between them. Just an unspoken sense of distance.

All Alec seemed able to do was to give space. To be at hand, as often as he could, without imposition.

"I'll text you when I'm back." He clipped the holster on around his leg. His bow and quiver were hung over the back of a chair by the door; the one thing Magnus's lavish decor lacked was a proper weapons rack.

"Try and keep yourself in one piece, won't you?" Magnus's voice stalled Alec in mid-turn.

"It's just some Kuri demons. A couple of rookies got in over their head." So Alec was heading out with a third damp-eared Shadowhunter to rescue them—even if Clary showed a few tricks above and beyond the average novice.

"A routine mission," Magnus said, his feet soft on the carpet. "Nothing to worry about, then."

Last night, when Alec had actually got caught up in a book by the time Magnus was finished, he'd pressed a kiss to Alec's hair and slipped away into bed, leaving him to read. That had possibly been meant as an opening in the layered barrier that fluxed and flowed between them.

Alec bit his lip, unseen. "Try to get some sleep, okay?"

A pointless suggestion. Alec was a light enough sleeper to be aware that Magnus had become an even twitchier one recently.

"Portal?" Magnus countered, any drowsy dregs gone from his voice. "Since young lives seem to be at stake."

The youths in question had held their own against worse than a few Kuri, but after a tarry beat of reluctance— _I don't want to trouble you when you're already troubled_ —Alec nodded. "Please."

As Alec gathered his jacket and weapons, the twilight in the living room rippled into the distinctive funnel of a portal. Magnus had followed him just far enough to have a line of sight for the spell.

"Thank you," he said, too woodenly.

"Bring your lost lambs safely home." Magnus waved a hand, and maybe it was merciful neither of them could see the other's face that well. "I'll take that as thanks."

Squaring his shoulders, Alec pictured the north corner of the park and, with a stiff, purposeful step, went out into the night.

* * *

The portal disgorged him exactly onto the brink of the sidewalk, in a patch of half-shadow between two streetlights. He touched his stele to the two runes immediately necessary: a glamour to hide him, then a _nyx_ rune to sharpen his sight. The night chill, frigid for early October, misted his breath into visible vapour. A couple of cars slid past, one trailed by the crackling bass beat of a stereo on its last leg of life.

He was reaching for his phone when running steps sounded behind him. 

"Hey." Clary pattered to a stop. Her hair was scraped into a single wispy plait, and her dark work boots suggested Izzy's lessons on fighting in heels were still a work in progress. He hadn't seen much of her since she'd gone to the Seelie Court with Jace, a week or so ago. The details he'd gotten from Jace—long-sufferingly—and Izzy—circumstantially—went a ways to explain why she'd been scarce at the Institute. Paradoxically enough, he thought he could relate.

"You're early," she said.

"Portal privileges." To her, he could make it a wry joke. Her mouth crooked a little in response. "Anything new?"

"Not since I got over here." She called up the city map on her phone screen. "There's a condemned building a few blocks to the southeast. Izzy said the demons are probably nesting there. And—I tracked Rozmiarek near there. I can get a better read when we're closer."

Alec made a face. "They never should've been able to dig in that deep."

"Isn't this a pretty normal Shadowhunter problem?" Guided by her map, they started off at a jog. "I don't really have a baseline here, but clearing out a demon hive sounds kind of run-of-the-mill."

He huffed, half out of surprise. "Sure. Count out the fact that we're understaffed and overworked and the Institute's been yanked through four changes of leadership since summer, and this is what we're supposed to be doing."

"Great." Her voice went muffled, then returned. "I could use some normal."

"It's probably gonna involve you up to your elbows in demon ichor." In the back of his head, he ran through a few possible scenarios. If the demons had had time to spin a lair for themselves, it'd mean close quarters. He couldn't trust Clary at his back quite like he could Jace or Izzy, but they'd manage.

"That's what I like about you," she said. "You tell it like it is. Turn right here."

The side street looked somnolent, the storefronts black and dim, a few scattered lights shining through curtains in the upper stories. High above, a thread of conversation flowed indistinct from an open window. Alec quickened his pace. "Just try to keep up, Fray." 

"I'm the one with the map, remember?" She raised her head and overtook him with a swerving spurt of speed. "Come on, fearless leader. Let's do this."

Jostled into what felt treacherously like a better mood, Alec sprinted after her. After the soft, insidious tension that stifled the air between him and Magnus, a demon hunt through the nighttime city was nearly liberating.

* * *

Clary had brought one of Agnes Rozmiarek's flowery Russian scarves to track her. They stopped on a street corner so she could renew her bead on their missing colleague. The targets of their search and rescue hadn't issued a call for help, and Kuri demons were on par with the Shax breed as a serious nuisance rather than a grave danger. Still, they tended to appear in droves.

"Up through here." The cramped alley where Clary led them nearly occluded her figure despite the night vision rune. The sliver of light-shrouded sky above was cut by the zig-zagging shapes of rusting fire escapes. Smothering a flash of impatience, Alec let her keep point. This was the exact kind of practice she needed, before the next inevitable crisis hit them in the face.

"Not much farther—what the hell?"

Alec had his bow raised in reaction before she went on, "I lost her. Like she just... sputtered out."

"What?" He looked ahead to the next street, bubbling with the voices of a few tardy bar-goers braving the cold, seated at the tables outside. "Did your rune run out?"

"No. I was reading her clearly and then she vanished." Clary turned her hand over as if to make sure.

Alarm juddered through him. "Two options. Either something's interfering with your tracking, or she's dead."

He could hear the way her face fell in her voice. "We need to hurry."

"So whatever's out there can get the drop on us, too?" There'd been a time, not long ago, when his tone would've matched the words in sharpness. "Draw your blade and stick close."

"There's an alley right across the street. Head there." She tucked her seraph blade into line with her arm, a curiously Jace-like gesture, and dropped into his wake as they moved on.

The chattering company at the corner bar covered the sound of their steps. The alley ahead swallowed them from sight again, any lamps above doorways long since either burned or blown out. Something scrunched under their boots, letting up a lungful of rot and copper, and Clary made a dismayed rasp that didn't quite swell into a cough. Through a dark, dented door came a more sedate reek of long unoccupancy.

Complete darkness, such as formed inside a lightless building, would thwart even a _nyx_ rune. Alec considered a witchlight, when a rattle of metal wrenched his attention overhead instead.

A gob of something stringy and viscous spattered into the doorframe next to his head. He fired a rune-charged arrow in response, more to use the sizzle of light to gauge the enemy. A flurry of thin, spindly limbs shot across a fire escape landing three stories above, and Clary dove to the left as another projectile narrowly missed her.

"I see three, up and across the alley." She had her stele out, hastily tracing a rune on the back of her hand. "Cover me!" 

"Hey—" He didn't waste more than a second on confusion. The steps and railings hindered his aim, but her principle was sound: the mere skim of a runed arrow would scatter a minor demon into dust. Tucking himself into the doorway to present a smaller target, he focused on any movement that wasn't Clary, hauling herself up on top of a broken dumpster and then onto the lowest landing. Her feet flew up the steps with weightless alacrity.

He took out the first Kuri as it tried to leap down upon her, a murky, arachnid form whose eye sockets bristled with the sickles of venomous fangs. The force of the shot threw it into the building wall, already half disintegrated. Clary ran up past the remains, and the furious click of pincers on metal marked another demon closing on her.

Alec had to leave it to her: dead above him, glass burst outward in a shower of shrapnel as a demon hurtled out a window of the abandoned building. Its foremost limbs clamped onto the opposite fire escape, and the railing gave a horrid creak under its weight.

Dashing to the right, he angled for a high shot before it could scramble over the rail. Clary dispatched her own target with a shout and a sweep of her blade, just as the final Kuri she'd spotted rolled itself down to hang over the edge of a landing.

Kuri demons were blind, but they compensated with a keen sensitivity to vibration. She'd given away her movements the second she ascended the aged fire escape.

"Behind you!" He loosed his arrow too hastily, and it sailed a crucial notch past the leaper demon. His warning saved Clary, though; she spun just as the third monster spat a wad of poison at her. The syrupy stuff dribbled down through the grill of the landing.

They were making a racket. The demon that'd bounded into the fracas through the window couldn't be the only other one here. At least Clary stepped up smoothly, grabbed the dangling demon by one of its wiry limbs and dragged it down to level with her. The chatter of its fangs was cut by a downward stab of her blade, rendering it into a billow of oily dust.

"—one?" Alec's head snapped to the side at the voice. It rasped barely audibly through the warped door.

"Hang on, we're coming!" he called in reply. The leaper was nearly upon the landing, where the metal structures would shield it from him.

"—one there?"

Setting his jaw, he took aim again. No time to draw runes to aid him, and his _nyx_ rune was fading, smudging everything into deepening shades of gray.

The demon was faster. It sprang into motion, black legs flying, the rings of its fangs extended towards Clary, who stood at the far end of the landing. A brush with Kuri poison would numb the skin; a bite was enough to paralyze a limb or a body.

"Clary, move!"

Alec followed his own order, too, trailing the demon in the scant hope of finding a line of sight. Clary's boots clattered up the next flight of steps; at least it'd put her on higher ground. Her blade darted a defensive weave in the air but struck nothing, as the Kuri whirled up onto the stairs. Then he saw it: she vaulted over a missing set of stairs, the runes of her seraph blade flashing in the gap. The demon skittered a pace behind.

His hands ahead of his conscious thought, he drew back the arrow and let it fly in a chancy but clean arc. It sang through the gap and speared into the demon's abdomen; it fell into halves that fell into dregs in turn.

He'd drawn two ragged breaths, just enough to call out to Clary, when something crashed and dragged behind the door. An abrupt stench, like a wave of stagnant brine, roiled in the air. Forcing down a bout of nausea, Alec shouldered his bow and withdrew his witchlight. Whoever had spoken inside the building had gone dead quiet.

"Ugh." Slipping down from the fire escape, Clary buried her nose in her sleeve. "What's that smell?"

"I don't know. There's somebody inside. I heard them shouting."

"Agnes?" She sounded a little hopeful.

"I was a bit busy for fine details." Alec grimaced. "It'll be pitch black in there, but we've got to go." The sounds of movement had stopped: not actually an encouraging sign.

She pulled off the wool scarf around her neck. "Give me the witchlight. It's better if you have your hands free, in case we get jumped."

He couldn't help raising a brow, though the gesture was lost in the near dark of the alley. She wrapped the glowing stone in the scarf so it turned into an impromptu flashlight, a soft beam of illumination instead of a sphere projecting in all directions. An opening rune shattered the half-corroded lock holding the door, and, seraph blades in hand, they entered.

* * *

The shimmer of the witchlight revealed a back room on the other side. Exposed piping stretched across the ceiling, and mounds of decaying cardboard boxes teetered under contents probably best left unexplored. A door on the far wall had splintered off its hinges, leaving a blasted doorway that must lead into a basement, mirrored by a staircase going up in the same corner. Rusty water had dried in brownish tracks along the wall beneath the pipes.

On the floor, the tracks spun into messy curves, like somebody had circled a damp broom through the accumulated grime. The putrid salt smell lingered, stronger close to the basement stairs.

"Kuri demons nest up, not down, right?" Clary whispered.

"Yeah." They might've gotten lucky and slain the sentinels before the rest of the hive had stirred. Kuri were liable to slide into a kind of torpor when not hunting, sometimes for days in between killings. "We're not just—wait. Shine the light down there."

Alec sidled to the top of the stairs and picked up the object that'd reflected the witchlight into his eye.

A bead-string charm hung from a corner of the phone. Fracture lines spidered across the darkened screen.

"Alec. That's Fatima's." Clary's eyes were wide with alarm. Fatima Lovejoy, one of last summer's new arrivals, had been her sparring partner more than once in recent weeks.

"What the fuck happened here?" He couldn't hear anything from the stairway, bald concrete steps descending sharply. Semi-solid droplets of something he'd thought to be dirt glimmered in the light: pinhead-sized, still hardening, as if recently shed. He probed one, and it hissed on contact with his gloved knuckle. Salt prickled his eyes.

_A routine mission_ , Alec could hear Magnus say, and now, in hindsight, the hard, brittle quality of his composure. Unease began to clot in his throat.

"Ichor." He flipped his blade into an underhand grip. "If they went into the basement, they couldn't get a network signal."

"What about a fire message?" Clary crouched to show light for him as he climbed down a few steps.

"Advanced rune. Not everybody learns it," he said, then focused on not gagging at the stink clouding the stairwell. "Go outside and call Izzy. She needs to know what we—"

" _Alec_!"

A large shape dropped from the ceiling, the camouflage that'd blended it into the pipes sloughing off as it came. It was wider across than his arm-span, and a circular maw of ivory teeth opened in the middle of its squid-like body. Three thick tentacles whipped at him, slapped aside his frantic parry, and knocked him clean off his footings with a hammering sideways blow.

His blade rang out against concrete and dimmed, flung from his grip, as he tumbled down the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took some artistic liberties with the healing runes compared to book canon, I'm sure. Roll with it. ♥

_We will never be the change_  
_to the weather and the sea_  
_and you knew that_

— Ben Howard

* * *

Pain lanced into Alec in staccato impacts: knee, knuckles, ribs, temple, bursting red and raw. Instinct made him tuck his head in, arms braced to shield it. He slid into a groaning halt after too many stairs, the ceiling reeling wildly in his star-spattered vision.

"Clary!" he tried to shout, but got out only a slur of sound.

Distorted and too distant, he heard her voice rising into a challenge. Up top, the air swished and swam with movement, serpentine arms striking at the limber crescent of Clary's seraph blade.

He propped himself up against the wall, biting back a noise as his skinned hands scraped on its rough surface. The fingerless gloves had protected them somewhat. His wits returned in lurches.

 _Okay. Okay. You're conscious. No broken bones. You need an_ iratze _right now._

A slithering thud sounded from above, a collision between soft bodies, followed by the noise of tearing cardboard. Pale sheets of paper flurried down into the stairwell.

"Shit—! Alec, can you hear me? Alec!"

It sounded like Clary wasn't doing so hot, either. The point of his stele shook in his sight, or maybe that was his fingers. Responding stickily to his gestures, the healing rune lit in a jag of nauseating heat, but it dulled the pain and began mending his scratches and bruises.

The demon had hidden itself without a trace, except for the overwhelming seawater reek. The draft rising from below was heavy with humidity.

Something smacked fleshily into the wall by the stairs; the demon's tentacles arced across the light, and Clary half dove into the stairwell, straight underneath them. The side of her head was split by a ragged slash that was bleeding freely.

"Alec—oh, thank god. Come on!"

"Downstairs," he gasped, and apparently she had the same idea. Most of his arrows had sprayed from the quiver as he fell, but by some miracle his seraph blade had landed nearly beside him. Half supported by her grip of his arm, he stumbled down alongside her.

The rowed spines in its tentacles chafing along the wall, the demon scuttled after them. He tried to rack his already rattled brain for some old lesson or picture in a demonology book that could lend him a clue.

"I tried—tried the sunlight rune, but it's too fast." The witchlight in Clary's left hand threw flashes of illumination: the stairs petered out into a basement room whose corner had collapsed into a murky maw, framed by the ends of ripped steel supports. Their footfalls rang off the naked walls.

Clearly the demon was a magnitude above the Kuri in power. Its skin had an odd, opalescent shimmer, and it left a short-lived track of ichor upon the wall as it surged towards them. They pushed apart as their feet hit even floor again; Alec swung around and called his blade into being.

"Stay behind me and try again!" Drawing runes in mid-combat was usually bad strategy, but he'd take whatever got them through this. He stepped in to meet the demon in the doorway; in the wider space of the room it'd be harder to contain. Tentacles raked the air, swaying back as he struck at the main mass of the demon.

Its flesh clove like wet clay, too easily. Two of its tentacles thudded to the floor, and Alec barely kept his balance as he wrenched himself back from the overextended blow.

"Clary, any time now!"

"You realize if I let go of the witchlight, we won't see a thing!"

Even if he'd had a caustic comeback, the demon robbed him of the opportunity. He barely fell away in time from a pair of limbs sweeping in from his left, then split one of them from the creature's body with a hewing slash. Ichor spurted from the stump, slicking the floor.

In a blinding pulse of movement, the demon scrabbled up, suspended from its remaining tentacles, and as he chased it, blade licking a gory gouge across its middle, it wrapped a barbed grip around his left forearm. Clary gave a short, shocked scream.

The bulk of the demon pitched on top of him. He crashed onto his knees, one arm yanked viciously backward, and felt a score of teeth sink into the back of his right shoulder, deep white prongs of pain through skin and muscle. His arm went nerveless, his weapon clanging down for the second time in too few minutes.

The teeth retracted from his flesh, and as they were about to knife in again, widening the wound, a weight slammed into the demon and through it, into him as well.

With a yell, Clary shoved her runed palm right into the demon's skin. Dazzling amber light glowed through her fingers, boiling into the demon with a macabre, steam-like hiss that went on as it spasmed, repeatedly, the tearing mouth at his shoulder going slack.

Alec pushed the creature off him and, left-handed, stabbed his blade crudely through it. The carved runes scorched away what was left of its vital spark until it heaved once more and began to dissolve.

"There's somebody by the wall," Clary said, tremulous. "I think it's Fatima."

It took Alec a near-heroic effort to focus on her words. Adrenalin had blunted the ringing in his head, but he'd cracked it on a stair with some force. The _iratze_ was still bolstering him; it wouldn't last much longer.

"Is she breathing?" He rose onto his feet with a slight stagger.

She braced herself visibly before going to the figure slumped by the right-hand wall. The floor was streaked with the dark fall of the woman's hair. Blood glistened on her side. "Yeah. She's got a bite on her ribs—that squid thing, not a Kuri bite."

"She was calling out to us." Alec closed his eyes and swallowed. "You know the _mendelin_ rune?" It would stabilize even a serious injury and stave off further decline.

"Izzy showed me. I've never used it."

"Draw it as—as close to her heart as you can." He was in need of one himself: an _iratze_ would seam the skin over the bite in his shoulder, but it might not close the wound cleanly. The bite bled remarkably little; he wondered if the demon's spit contained some kind of blood-clotting agent.

It'd hauled Lovejoy down here, yet left her alive. Implications: not pleasant.

Peeling back his jacket sleeve, he sketched out a somewhat suspect _mendelin_. It stayed on his skin as a faint sharp outline, soaking new strength into him, pulling away the pain of his injury.

Her own first aid done, Clary made sure Lovejoy breathed steadily. Though she barely stirred, she murmured something at Clary rearranging her more comfortably. _Not unconscious. That's good._

"You think we'll find Agnes?" Clary traced an _iratze_ on her own arm, and the gash on her scalp knit. She did have an adept hand with runes.

"I think." His tongue knotted. He began again. "I think we have to get Izzy a message." At least he dodged the question with full intention. "You, uh, you got a piece of paper?" As he'd suspected, his phone showed no signal whatsoever.

"An artist wouldn't be caught butt naked without a piece of paper." With a game flourish, she produced a small sketch pad and a pencil.

Alec dictated to her a succinct situation report to Izzy, then set a flame to the sheet with a rune. As it curled away into blue smoke, to uncurl again wherever his sister was, he felt a shudder travel through all of him, a bone-deep tremor that brooked no ignoring it.

Clary's arm was around him with embarrassing quickness, her slight frame tensing to hold him up. "I hate to break it to you, but you should probably sit down."

" _You_ telling _me_ I overdid it." He found enough guff to be sardonic as she eased him to lean on the wall. "That's... a lot."

"I can't exactly look bad in front of you, can I?" Her smile twisted, unmerry. "Mr. Head of the Institute. You can fire me now."

"Shadowhunters don't get fired. It's kinda a vocation." Alec had a vague feeling he might not be making much sense. His skull throbbed, like the bones had shrunk too tight to fit over his brain.

She could've riposted with many things, from de-runing to the Clave's other tyrannical excesses to even the way her mother had slid away from the grasp of the Shadow World. She'd meant it when she'd said she held him innocent in Jocelyn's death, but he'd always carry that with him. It remained a sore subject.

"Should I go look for Agnes?" was what she said.

"No," he said immediately. "Lovejoy's down, I'm wounded, you've drawn a lot of runes really fast. You feel fine now but when you crash it could be a hard one."

"But—she's counting on us."

Alec looked up at her face. "Izzy knows we lost her trail. She could've activated her blocking rune to—to try and hide from the demon. Somebody at the Institute, or maybe Dot Rollins if they need to get a warlock, could still find her."

 _Or Magnus_ , he thought, then tried not to think about Magnus in this context.

A muscle twinged in Clary's jaw. "Don't start coddling me now, Alec. You already said she could be dead."

"Yeah, I did." For a moment he felt utterly thrown for a loop. A side effect of the head trauma, probably. Or a side effect of having to consider Clary Fairchild's feelings, which he felt compelled to do. "Because it's true. I didn't recognize that demon, so they ran into it blind, too. This wasn't a routine mission."

"How does that change that we were supposed to _rescue_ her?" She stood up, a snap of a motion, her heels loud on the concrete.

"Rescue them. Both of them." Related or not, sometimes she and Jace resembled each other so much Alec wanted to strangle one or the other out of sheer frustration. _Save everyone_ was an ideal he wanted to adhere to. Reality just kept shredding it. "If you go off now, you're leaving me to watch Lovejoy with a fucked-up arm and a knocked head."

A stiff breath slipped through her compressed lips.

"This is where you need to be right now." He still spoke to her turned back. "Until Izzy can get us some backup."

A moment passed. Maybe only a few seconds, maybe half a minute. Clary's fingers clenched around the witchlight, then she eased it into her other hand.

"Okay." She squatted down next to him. "Um, friends for a minute? Instead of the whole on-a-mission, lead-and-follow setup?"

His brows knit in bemusement. _Friends_ , she said. "I guess. I don't see anybody charging in to save or kick our asses just now."

"Good." She had a lilt, undercutting her facade of tattered bravado. "Because I could use a hug, and you're the closest thing to a huggable person here."

Before it occurred to him to be offended, he held out his good arm and let her curl under it, her arm sliding carefully around his lower back. She sighed quietly. He huffed in her general direction. "You tell anybody about this and I'm putting you on ichor duty."

"That your grumpy coating hides a chewy marshmallow heart? That's old news. You forget I talk to Izzy on the regular."

Alec didn't really have a counterargument, so he shut up with another heavy exhalation. Clary eeled out from the hug, such as it'd been, but sat down next to him, armed with his witchlight and her own unlit blade. His head dipped under its own weight. _No. No. Don't nod off._

"Talk to me," he said. "I mean—just so I stay awake."

"Oh. Sure."

Water dribbled somewhere behind the cave-in in the floor. Lovejoy made a sudden gasping sound, but settled at Clary's hand on her shoulder. The _mendelin_ Clary had drawn under her collarbone still shone, as did the one on Alec's arm. They'd just have to hold out a bit longer.

"Simon broke up with me," Clary said then. Not the most casual of conversation openers, but could he blame her? He was acutely conscious of all the things he'd ducked away from today.

"I know." His voice dipped. "I'm sorry. That's rough."

"Of course you know. Jace, right?" She swiped a damp strand of hair from her nose; her plait had suffered a near-total loss of integrity during their scraps.

As it happened, Alec was in possession of several facts about his brother's feelings on her that he'd implicitly sworn to keep secret. The most startling fact could well be that they bothered him way less than they had, even a month ago.

"Probably best to operate under the assumption that what he knows, I know," he said, not unkindly. "A few exceptions aside."

"That's good." Her words drifted into the quiet. "That's really good. That you guys talk."

"Mm-hm." She could've just as well said _the sky is blue_ or _your sister is too good for this world_. Jace was never up for dispute, however much he managed to annoy Alec at any given time.

"Your turn to tell me something inappropriately personal."

Quite against his intentions, he guffawed. "I said _talk_ , not _confess_."

"What, like we're going to sit in the demon-infested murder basement and chat about the weather?" She rolled her eyes. "Totally out of genre. Any genre."

"Fine." He fretted with the hilt of his seraph blade. "I was kinda glad to come out here tonight. Something's... wrong with Magnus and I don't know how to help."

Clary's face scrunched in immediate sympathy, but she dawdled a moment with her answer. "I get that. Feeling relieved when there's a job you know how to do. People are a lot more complicated."

"No shit." Alec dared to cant his head back. "I've got to be losing it if you're starting to sound wise."

"I don't know about that." Her knees folded up into a protective angle. "Simon's not talking to me. At all. That's _never_ happened before, Alec. I'm just... at a loss."

"You and me both."

"It's not like Magnus is shutting you out, is it?" she said. "That gives you something to work with. I know you're not really the forthcoming type, but—ask him?"

"I've tried." It was a delicate skein of worry and remorse that entangled him. The blow to the head wasn't helping. He'd blame that later. "It's not that simple. He's really good at evading when he wants to be."

"Then maybe it's not your problem to solve."

"It's kinda hard to _ignore_."

"I don't mean like that. It's that sometimes you can't march in and set things right, and it doesn't matter how badly you want to." Her eyes were disarmingly earnest, though her tone was low. "But you can do other things. Take somebody's mind off their problems. Just let them know you love them."

A part of Alec wanted to scoff at her assumption of simplicity, the naïve premise that _distraction_ could serve in place of an actual answer.

Then he remembered she'd conceded his harsh triage of their resources: they might well have lost a colleague tonight, and they'd both have to live with that. There wasn't any way through that possible fact except to bear it.

He was still rolling the thought over when voices sounded from the ground floor. Fresh witchlight flickered down the stairs, and Jace appeared with a raised eyebrow, a concealed flare of relief, and a team of four to get them home.

* * *

Back at the Institute, Jace consigned the three of them to the tender mercies of the medics. Alec didn't miss how Clary shirked subtly from Jace's concern, and then proceeded to miss the next five hours while someone patiently drew anesthetic and curative runes on his sleeping body.

He woke a little before 8 AM to learn that Jace's team had retrieved Agnes Rozmiarek from the Kuri hive upstairs, in an advanced stage of poisoning but alive. She'd tried to hide from the demons behind a glamour, which had blocked Clary's inexpert tracking attempt.

Alec figured he didn't have to underscore that aspect to Clary. As for himself, he'd had a minor concussion, but the rapidly applied healing runes had softened the symptoms. His right arm responded without pain: it'd be some days before he could put normal stress on it.

Light duty, then. Not that it'd save him from paperwork.

He negotiated his release from the infirmary, checked on Clary to find her patched up but dead to the world, and collected his things from an infirmary locker.

As he looked at his phone again, it dawned on him that, one, he'd forgotten to text Magnus, and two, Magnus hadn't inquired after him via phone or otherwise. His message log looked pretty peaceable for a morning one.

Technically he wasn't due back on duty until evening. The night mission had interrupted his allotted 24 hours off, but he wasn't going to quibble about that.

That left him with roughly ten hours of freedom. The rune-induced sleep had cleared his head, and everyone around him was caught up in the usual bustle of the Institute. The sky outside his bedroom window promised crisp weather, with enough wind to blow away the worst dust and fume of the city.

The question remained: where did he need—want—to be right now?

* * *

Magnus had given Alec a key, which he'd used maybe twice before. It seemed like an arguable permission to enter.

He'd sent a message— _Made it back in one piece. I'll be over in an hour if that's ok?_ —before setting out. It contained approximately three lies of omission, mostly because Magnus should hear those pieces of news in person. No answer came before he arrived. Magnus _was_ one of those sane people who silenced their phones at night, though. The time was courting 10 AM.

The loft wards rippled across his skin, the hum of them nearly welcoming as they let him through. Half-cloudy light poured in through the windows and rounded the edges of things: the curiosities and art objects set along the walls, the armchairs scattered in the living room like little islets of comfort.

Alec picked his way toward the kitchen, veering around Chairman Meow as he roused to twine himself around Alec's ankle. He scooped the cat up and let him climb onto his shoulder. Tiny claws hooked through the wool of his sweater in prickly approval.

A plump goose-down pillow sat tumbled on the floor by one end of the couch, clearly out of place. He circled closer, leaned over the back, and stopped there.

Magnus's head was angled against his bent arm, from the crook of which the pillow had fallen onto the carpet. He'd brought a duvet along, too, drifted messily around most of him. It seemed such a mundane, ordinary thing to do, dragging the bedclothes onto the couch after hours of tossing in bed, in the hope that a change of place would lull you into sleep. It didn't quite compute that Magnus would ever feel the need for it.

He was soundly asleep. At least it'd done the trick.

Carefully, Alec shut the bright autumn day out behind the curtains, and made sure the kitchen door clicked closed on his heels.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will pry my "Alec totally cooked for his siblings when his parents were busy/away" headcanons from my cold dead hands.

  
_Oh, we're alone_  
_just like you said_  
_last year to learn_

— Ben Howard

* * *

About two minutes into it, Alec had to admit to a few complications in his plan.

There had to be some piece of important life advice to the effect of, _Never cook in a strange kitchen_ , with a subclause of _while the owner of said kitchen is sleeping in the next room_.

He banged too many cupboard doors and narrowly averted a disaster with a saucepan wedged on top of the skillet he was trying to withdraw, before he had the necessary dishes piled on the marble countertop. The Chairman perched on the range hood. Alec was unsure of his permission to be there, but the cat monitored his endeavor with such polite, whisker-quivering fascination that it seemed too rude to shoo him off.

He couldn't remember many mornings of eating at the loft, even when he'd stayed over often enough to have a designated side of the bed. Magnus had an endless list of places that served a brunch or breakfast to die for, and a quick hand with a portal to take them there.

Which was all good. Magnus clearly delighted in expanding Alec's culinary horizons. Maybe surprisingly, the kitchen was equipped as lovingly as Magnus's shelves of arcane components. A sundry of spices hid in the cupboard next to the spotless gas stove, and the fine, heavy cast iron skillet he'd found seemed equally suited for frying a crepe or, in a pinch, clobbering an unwary intruder.

He was in the middle of the former—something he'd last done for Izzy, years ago—when the kitchen door swished behind him. The cat launched from his post, chirping at Magnus, who'd stopped in the doorway, watching Alec with a hazy air of surprise.

"Morning," Alec said, bereft of anything else to say. "I sorta made a mess of your kitchen, but, ah, for a good cause."

"Good morning." Magnus paused to let the Chairman tangle with his bare foot. The cat flitted a circle around him, then careened off through the opened door. "And you're letting this impressionable youngster get up to no good."

"Noted. Cat not allowed on the range hood."

"There's only so far you can tell a cat to do anything. That's part of their charm." Magnus looked tousled enough that he couldn't have been awake for more than a few minutes.

Humming in agreement, Alec smothered a stupid desire to kiss him, now, before he wrapped himself in his daytime layers. He could. Magnus would accept it. And the loops they walked around each other might get that much tenser, when he was trying to help the opposite happen.

Magnus lifted the plate Alec had used to cover another pan. Steam laden with the aromas of cheese and spinach wafted up. "Is this a frittata?"

Alec was very aware he'd crumpled said frittata trying to turn it over in an unfamiliar pan. "It might pass for one in bad lighting. It's good, I just haven't flipped one in ages."

"The search and rescue was successful, I take it."

"More or less." _Couldn't you have slept for another thirty minutes?_ He felt caught on the back foot, though his secrecy had an essential deadline. He couldn't really cook breakfast for Magnus and then avoid revealing his efforts. "Everybody lived. I'll tell you, uh, over this when it's done?"

Magnus's mouth crooked with the bare beginnings of a smile. "Shall we take this to the balcony? It looks like a lovely day."

Alec knew he was being indulged; it was too much of a relief for him to protest it. "Sure. But _you_ aren't doing a thing. Just give me half an hour."

"All right, Alexander." Alec concentrated on flipping the crepe, because Magnus's expression had done something that made it hard to look at him. "Half an hour it is."

* * *

By the most charitable estimate, breakfast hours were over by the time Alec was done. The wind spun the steam from the coffee pot into soft swirls over the no doubt unorthodox dishes he'd compiled, mostly from memories of feeding his siblings when his parents were away. A heap of lace-edged crepes—nicely turned out—was crowded next to the tidiest slices he'd got out of the frittata, and he'd found a few sweet early oranges on his walk over. Their scent still stained his fingers.

That aching shade hadn't entirely left Magnus's face when Alec let him onto the balcony. It was a _good_ kind, Alec surmised, but his heart beat easier when it vanished under an airier smile. 

"I may have to let you wreck the kitchen more often if the results are like this." Magnus leaned his hands on the back of his chair, tipping it back under his weight. He'd showered and dressed in the meantime, his eyes shaded in smoky blue and his ears glittering with silver.

"Better not swear on it before you try it," Alec said, helplessly between self-consciousness and satisfaction.

"Now, now, I'm allowed a little faith. I woke up to find a stunningly handsome man making me breakfast and teaching mischief to my cat. That promises something good for today."

"Sit down," Alec huffed, his ears warm. He picked up the coffee pot and was glad his arm didn't argue the effort of pouring. "It'll get cold and you'll still be talking."

The day was brisk for eating outside, but the clouds parted and the mid-autumn sun threw a late spill of golden warmth across the Brooklyn shore. Alec relaxed by inches as they eased into roaming conversation over the food, little observations of no consequence, mystifying tidbits from Magnus's research, a pared-down version of Alec's mission with Clary last night. He skimmed over the severity of his shoulder injury, and Magnus offered to dig up a few volumes in his research library that might help identify the demon.

Not long ago, he'd have skated the edge of nervous because everything was new and electric, every little gesture untried before. Now it was the disturbances in their fragile routine that twitched at him. Every laughing comment that rang flirty, every brush of fingers over passing a dish was another question.

Finally their plates were empty and Alec wasn't any closer to tangible answers, but Magnus looked out over the street with a sort of ease on his face. That counted as an achievement.

"Thank you, Alec." The good humour in his voice was definitely another. "You're hereby welcome to wreck the kitchen at your leisure."

"Well, don't get used to it," Alec said, then amended, "I mean, my cooking repertory's not actually that wide."

Magnus set his empty cup down with a chime of china. "I'm not sure I remember the last time someone woke me up quite like this."

There was a thing that was wrong with the universe, Alec decided with sudden vehemence. Magnus deserved every ounce of kindness the world had to spare, and then some.

Instead, he'd been forced into the body of a genocidal madman, and hurt and nearly killed by Alec's own people. Alec had tried to move past the events, his own shame and remorse at his part in them, at not _realizing_ sooner. Magnus had seemed to want a return to normal, and sometimes that was the best course. Not every fear and trauma had to be dwelt upon; he understood this as a Shadowhunter. They dealt with the stuff of nightmares on a daily basis.

Still, _buried_ did not mean _forgotten_.

Here, in the full light of day, the city spread out below them, it was easy to believe in gentler possibilities. He toyed with a leftover slice of orange. "Maybe I felt like doing something nice for you. Not like you've got exclusive rights to that."

Magnus frowned, thoughtful and something else Alec couldn't pinpoint. "True enough."

His hand fell onto the table, nails chafing on the tablecloth. It drew Alec's eye, the strong, fine lines of the half-bent fingers, a vanishing burn scar from a potion-brewing incident under the second knuckle.

Was it a permission, or did Alec just want to interpret it as one?

That wasn't even what he wanted it to be. He wanted it to be an invitation, an offer.

His phone, left in his jacket pocket, rang. The sound carried clear through the open balcony door, jerking his head up from his likely obvious contemplation.

"Sorry. I should take that. Be a minute." Half happy for the reprieve, excused by a tolerant wave of the hand from Magnus, Alec went to answer it.

Clary's voice greeted him at the other end. She still had the worst timing, or, alternatively, she'd just saved him. "Hi. Izzy did some database wizardry, and we probably ID'd the squid thing from last night."

"Yeah?" That probably counted as pertinent information. He wandered into the living room as she wound onto a sidetrack about her and Izzy's jaunt into the Institute archives.

"Remember that hole in the basement? It's a water demon, a rare breed. It must've crawled up from the sewers."

"Let me guess. It moves in packs." Leaning against the jamb of the bedroom door, he sighed dryly. "We need to get a team back there to clear out the Kuri, anyway."

"Yes and no," Clary said. "If it's the kind we think, it's solitary, but it can influence lesser demons. That's why it was so close to the Kuri nest. It was using them to hunt. I thought I'd find out if there's any missing person reports from the area, just to cross-check."

She was feeling industrious. At least one of them was getting results. Her avenue of investigation could be a fruitful one: most demons fed on human pain and terror, and a more cunning monster might draw out the suffering of its victims. If people had disappeared close to the lair...

"That's good thinking," he said, not even grudgingly. Letting his previous thought slip away, he squinted at the bedroom, awash in sunlight from the window, then at the unmade bed with its mussed linens.

Whatever she said next went past him as he hit upon what was amiss about the sight. He went up to the bed and laid his hand on the bare sheet on the left side, where he'd slept—last night and most nights after the first.

He'd left on the mission, and Magnus had, to all evidence, stolen his bedding while he was gone.

Okay then.

"—I'll let you know what they find," said Clary, and Alec had no idea who _they_ were.

"Add it to the pile on my desk." He tugged his thoughts back in. "I'll be back in the evening."

His thoughts had other destinations. Such as: Did this count as some kind of wistful romantic cliché, like pinching a piece of clothing from a lover as a keepsake? Why would Magnus, as deliberate as he was usually generous about his affection, keep a studied space between them and then—

And then this. This one candid, partial detail to shed a light on the situation. He fought his conclusion for a moment before allowing it to settle.

 _You miss me when I'm gone, but you don't know how to be close when I'm there._ His eyes strayed toward the balcony, though the bedroom wall blocked it from view. How arrogant was it, to even assume something like that?

"I'll stop butting in on your downtime." He could hear Clary's steps echoing down a corridor. "Say hi to Magnus."

"Uh, yeah." Pulling back to the door, Alec recalled something not related to his abrupt dilemma, and seized upon it with a measure of relief. "And hey—"

"Yes, O fearless leader?"

He snorted. "You kept your head pretty well. Thanks for the company."

"Say that again. I'm gonna record this for the next time I don't get a fancy shadowhunting trick on the first try."

"You wish, Fray."

"That's _Miss Fairchild_ to you. Try to take it easy." He let her laughter bubble into the line for a moment before ending the call.

Maybe it was nothing. He was making a big deal of a baseless conclusion because he had nothing solid to go on.

The balcony door shut behind him. Alec set his shoulder against one of the brick columns in the living room and pretended to scroll through something on the phone.

"All quiet on the Institute front?"

"Mm-hm." His message log wasn't a viable hiding place or even a stalling tactic. "Mission follow-up. Nothing serious." Not that he was in a shape for anything serious. The runes had done their work, and the rest was up to natural healing. He didn't have any illusions of drawing a bow; his fingers seemed to balk at stowing the damn phone in his pocket.

Or it was the slow tread of Magnus's feet across the floor that made him teeter. He should make up an excuse and retreat. Magnus was fine—fine in all the ways Alec could help, and the breakfast had been a wobbly victory, and if he stayed he'd find some improbable means of losing what ground he'd gained.

"Uh. I need to get a report in, though. So maybe I—"

Five points of faint pressure alighted on his back, then warmed into the weight of Magnus's hand. He found the place of the taped bandage above Alec's shoulder-blade almost exactly.

Alec stood still. He kept still as Magnus laid his head on the back of his shoulder, sighing against the bare nape of his neck.

"You're hurting more than you told me," Magnus said, quietly, thankfully before Alec had time to do anything particularly unwise.

It was impossible to deflect him when he sounded like that. Alec and his heart needed to have a stern conversation about that.

"It's not that bad. There's just a limit to what healing runes can do. They still use your own energy."

"I suppose," Magnus went on, "that you've seen what the Institute has on me?"

"Yeah," Alec said, with the weirdest sense of guilt, since Magnus had been a figure of interest to the Institute before Alec had been _born_. It wasn't like he'd compiled any of that file. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Then you know that healing is part of my considerable expertise." Magnus's fingers traced the rim of the bandage, steering clear of the scabbed wound under it. "Just in case all the practical demonstrations didn't make that clear."

Alec exhaled. His shoulders sagged. "Okay. If you're angry I didn't ask you..."

"Not angry. Bemused."

 _I guess that makes two of us._ But Magnus hadn't lifted his head or hand away. Ridiculously enough, Alec thought of his mother, and what he'd said to her in his father's office about resolve. _Break noses and accept the consequences._ At least this made for an interesting way to live up to the family reputation.

"It felt too much like looking for sympathy," he said then, squaring his jaw. "I—I don't know what's going on with you, and I don't have any way of asking that doesn't feel like taking a sledgehammer to your privacy, but I don't want to be a bother."

Magnus muttered something under his breath that was likely neither fit for polite society nor complimentary of Alec. "Save me from every gallant, self-effacing idiot." Now, he prodded at the wound. Not hard, but Alec couldn't stifle a flinch. "It'll take me ten minutes to fix this, or your body a week."

A couple of involuntarily deep breaths brought the flaring ache to an ebb again. Alec steeled himself. "I'll trade you."

He could picture the exact twist of Magnus's mouth without seeing it; the one that said curiosity had pierced his vexation. "I beg your pardon?"

"A hurt for a hurt." He flattened his hand on the column as if it could shore him up. "I let you fix my shoulder, and you let me do something for you. Whatever it is that helps."

" 'Whatever it is'." Magnus moved away, pacing around the column. Slow, seemingly fitful steps, to an underlying rhythm. "Given our history of agreements, that could be a dangerous proposition."

If Magnus wanted to pull that card, Alec had learned a thing or two from bargaining with him. "You turned down the thing I actually gave you for defending Izzy. And the other thing, the one you asked for at first, you got that too, right?"

"Did I now?" Emerging from Alec's right, Magnus angled his head, his eyes meeting Alec's, steady and equivocal. He offered that doubt to Alec freely. It meant something.

"Well, yes," Alec said, that something squeezing around his stubborn heart. "I'm here." _I'm yours._

Magnus's face underwent, again, a complex and unneat shifting; pressing his mouth flat, a shiver at the corner of it, he took hold of Alec's head and tipped their brows together.

"I hope you're not in the habit of making promises you can't keep, Alexander."

The curl of heat in Magnus's tone was most of the warning Alec had: then Magnus kissed him, like making a point, like cracking a seal. He'd gone up on his toes instead of letting Alec bend to him. His hands fumbling and then grasping Magnus's shoulders, Alec answered, striving to give as good as he got, his breaths turning short and shallow. He found the column at his back as Magnus steered him firmly against it.

"Never," he managed in reply when the kiss ended, barely, becoming a gasp shared between them. Magnus's thumbs framed his throat.

They hadn't kissed like that in—in weeks. Alec had to drag himself back to the larger context beyond Magnus's mouth or the ragged intensity of the kiss.

 _Are you okay?_ hovered on the tip of his tongue. It seemed oddly like a slight.

"I'll heal your shoulder," Magnus said, a touch unsettlingly sure. "Then I want you to take me to bed and make me think of nothing but you for, oh, a few hours. That seems reasonable."

 _Reasonable_ wouldn't have made the first ten words to describe the turn the situation had taken, but Alec slid his left arm down to wrap around Magnus, felt him solid and grounding and close.

"Okay," he said. "Done."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) In this house we assume some time passed between seasons 2A and 2B and _in general_ the episodes are a bit more spaced out.  
>  2) This chapter took me on a few detours, thus the slight delay. Here it is now. It may not slot seamlessly into canon, since I touch upon some of the same themes as 2x15, but it's pretty close.  
> 3) Katie and Joan are totally my heroes. ♥ Not without you, as is so often the case.

  
_Oh, climb out_  
_out enough to see_  
_the curl of the world_

— Ben Howard

* * *

Magnus nodded in agreement, smiling scantly, and that centered Alec. His hands stole down to the hem of Alec's sweater. "Shirt off, please."

"Oh. Right." That was a logical next step. Hampered by his shoulder, Alec did as bid, tossing his sweater and tee-shirt over the back of the couch. His blood rushed in his ears. He watched Magnus as he made him turn a quarter, right hand cupped around his injured shoulder.

"Was I that obvious? About the wound?"

Magnus blew out a breath. "I've had my eye on you for a while."

"I'm not really used to making a fuss." Not about himself, anyway. 

"Yes, of course. The Shadowhunter principle of stoic suffering. A stiff upper lip will cure whatever's wrong." Magnus's needling was at least sprinkled with amusement. He peeled the tape and gauze away. Though his hand on Alec was light, the touch was like a candle flame skirting his skin.

"Just get to it." Alec tried for levity. "Be easier to make good on my part if my arm works right."

"Do tell," Magnus said, in the same vein. Then, with an exaggerated, deploring sigh, "But not yet. As much as I'd enjoy the diversion, this is delicate work. Breathe deeply."

Alec should've been more used to the way Magnus could turn from suggestive to professional on a dime. He relaxed, or did his best to, into the spread of the healing through him. Tissue knit and tensions unspooled gradually as Magnus worked, the points of his fingers shifting now and then.

The last time Magnus had done anything like this, Alec had been submerged in tracking Jace, insensible to the intricacies of the magic beyond Magnus's presence as a faint tether back to his unconscious body. Now the healing was a deep heat just short of uncomfortable, unraveling the pains lodged in his body. He wondered if Magnus felt its working as closely as he did.

 _Get a grip_ , Alec told himself peevishly. _Way to make this weird._

Something of that wonderment remained, though, when Magnus let his hands fall. Alec's shoulders fell with them.

"There we go." Magnus gave Alec a contemplative look that wasn't entirely innocuous. "Better?"

"Much," Alec admitted. His fingers touched only unmarked skin where the scabbing had been.

"Remember this next time, since I can hardly stop you from getting injured in some heroic manner again."

 _I already ask for your help all the time._ Alec didn't say that aloud. In some way they were beyond keeping tabs. Magnus gave his time and aid often and willingly, but Alec was pretty certain it wasn't out of obligation.

"I will," he said instead, and kissed the side of Magnus's mouth. That first led into another, as Magnus's lips parted on a shudder of breath, and a third, as Alec found his mouth properly. The kiss lingered, opened, deepened. Magnus's fingers tightened into his hair.

His thoughts crumpled and collapsed, like snow in spring, into the surge of abrupt longing. He'd hedged around Magnus so carefully, waiting for him to come close, that the simple feel of him made Alec light-headed. He groped at Magnus's shirt buttons, one, two, three, then trailed his fingertips down the stripe of skin.

 _Make me think of nothing but you._ That was a tall sort of order.

Burying his head in Magnus's neck, Alec kissed the point where his clavicles met, and drew a stammering sound from him. There were way too many layers of clothing between them. Alec wanted to go to his knees right here; he wanted to tumble Magnus onto the couch and touch him with piety and purpose; he never wanted to break from his arms.

What Alec wanted wasn't the priority here. He dropped his hands to Magnus's hips, pulling back enough to speak.

"Is this—are we good?" _Because I've been missing you for weeks._

Magnus blinked darkly bright eyes at him, a hint of whim and rue in them. "Are you asking if I'm sure?"

"I guess. Yeah." It at least shaved close.

"I am if you are."

Annoyance pricked at Alec: he was letting himself think too much. His sister kept telling him he always tied himself in knots over things he should just go out and do.

He wet his lips with a flick of his tongue. Magnus's eyes darted to the gesture, and the look shivered down Alec's spine.

"This might be news to you," he said, feeling decidedly goofy, "but I'm kinda into you. A lot."

The chuckle that elicited from Magnus was wrenchingly light. "You don't have to try that hard. Truth be told, you had me at the crepes."

"Magnus. You took me to Paris. You were probably there when they _invented_ crepes."

"Oh no, Alexander." Devilment stole into Magnus's smile. "I looked at you this morning and I said to myself, 'Lilith's tits, Bane, whatever you do, keep this man.'"

"Sure you did." A lump and a laugh tangled together in Alec's throat.

Magnus's laughter wound into Alec's own, then petered off as he stroked his fingers over Alec's cheeks. "Kiss me?" It was just tentative enough to be a question.

Alec did—as if he could've refused, with Magnus soft-voiced and merry in front of him. Their mouths met, and Alec breached an unspoken rule and sank a hand in Magnus's hair to tilt his head back. Magnus tensed and gasped, then took the kiss from Alec, biting at his lower lip, running the tip of his tongue over it.

They kept kissing, wound up in the same hungry tempo, as Alec pushed Magnus back to the column, his left arm around his back. What broke them apart was Alec's helpless groan when he slotted a thigh between Magnus's and Magnus evidently had to one-up him by wrapping a leg over his hip.

"Oh, god." His lungs weren't suddenly deep enough.

"Tell me what you want," Magnus whispered.

"Me? What about _you_?"

" _I_ want you to tell me what you fancy, Alec. Something you've thought of, when you're alone. Something you'd like."

That was, pointed out the lucid part of Alec's mind, very like Magnus: always leaving him a choice, even when he insisted. Alec couldn't say how many times, exactly, they'd had sex, but he knew most of it had been gentle, exploring, free but rarely reckless. They'd nearly overturned one of the armchairs in the living room. Alec had slipped from Magnus's lap in mid-kiss and taken him into his mouth on the roof one clear September night. Once Magnus had woken him up with slick, tender kisses down his spine and to his ass, and rimmed him slowly and blissfully until Alec shouted into his pillow.

That was to say, it'd been an enlightening several weeks. But this, the desire twisted taut between them, felt different.

"Some time," he said, tucking a kiss under Magnus's ear, willing his voice to hold, "I want you like this. Up against the wall, you in my arms, so I can hold you up."

Magnus grabbed at him, a fistful of hair, fingernails in his skin, and the rough texture of the column chafed on Alec's bare arm as Magnus yanked him closer. "Don't you dare stop there."

"Uh, I hope you have a wall that's not brick?" The press of their bodies together did nothing for Alec's eloquence _or_ his capacity to think.

"That should be the least of your worries." Magnus sounded, for now, more amused than exasperated.

Swallowing the apology on his tongue, Alec kissed his mouth, a little wild with his own daring. "We'll take our time, right? You—you wrapped around me, my cock deep in you—"

"Fuck." The word trembled. Magnus rarely swore—it said a lot about how worked up he was. "Oh, you. I—I should've known what I was asking for."

 _That was the least smooth confession_ , Alec almost argued, though he could feel Magnus hot and full against his thigh, as flushed with want as Alec himself.

"Later," Magnus said, too much like a promise.

"Gonna hold you to that."

"Please." How _did_ Magnus do that, make a single word a tease and an affirmation?

"Okay," Alec said, hoarse, rallying what was left of his higher brain functions. If Magnus had meant that line of inquiry to wind him up, it was working. "If that's later, what about now?" 

"Now—" Magnus looped his arms around Alec's neck. His eyes narrowed, amber and then dark again. "Take me to bed. This time I want you under me, I do believe."

There was a crack in the moment as Alec decided. He'd dived headlong into this; he couldn't stop now. He dipped his arms under Magnus's thighs and hefted him, with an effort, off his feet, and Magnus stifled a burst of laughter into his shoulder.

_Whatever it is. Whatever you want._

* * *

They dropped onto the unmade bed in a mess of limbs, Alec narrowly rolling to the side of Magnus as he let go of him. He groaned more earnestly than was diplomatic. "When we get to that later, remind me the strength rune is a thing."

His skin sang with Magnus's closeness, but he felt the built-up exertion of holding him in his arms. It wasn't exactly hoisting a wounded teammate into a fireman's carry.

"Gladly. For pure and selfless reasons, of course."

Maybe it was the playful, coiling charge in the air that'd pushed Alec past shame or shyness. He'd run into both during their times together, but who was going to judge him in this space, framed by their bodies, by their common desire?

Remembering the more mundane detail of his shoes, he kicked them off over the edge of the bed. It was an affront to some power that Magnus was still wearing a shirt.

Magnus apparently agreed. He sucked a sharp kiss on the side of Alec's throat, fingers wresting at the fly of his jeans.

"Just," Alec said, despairing at the thought of contrary buttons and shirt cuffs and knotting trouser legs, "do your hand-waving thing."

"Do I spy a change of heart? My Alexander, a staunch champion of a good old-fashioned undressing, asking me to—"

"Get us both naked before I tear the buttons from your stupidly expensive shirt, yeah."

"Your wish is my command," Magnus said, with unjust panache for how rough he sounded. Blue sparked at the tips of his fingers. Cool air slithered along Alec's skin, the wave of it startling though he'd known what to expect. There was the dull smack of his jeans against the windowsill and then the floor, accompanied by the rustle of Magnus's clothes settling on the carpet.

"Hope that was not my phone hitting the wall."

"I clearly remember you telling me it was impact resistant." Magnus shrugged one shoulder, never mind that he was lying down. "Don't you run a routine risk of falling from places?"

"The reason I hate you doing that is that you can't aim for shit." Alec gave up trying not to laugh.

" 'Do not care to', not ' _cannot_ ', darling." Magnus slipped astride Alec's thighs, and the rest of his half-hearted protest evaporated under the naked weight of him. Inhaling in a tattered gulp, he caught Magnus's wrist. Magnus held in a jerk of tension, turning his palm to meet Alec's, their fingers interlocking instead. "Mm?"

"Leave the rings?"

"Adventurous today, aren't you?" Magnus rubbed the crook of his thumb along Alec's hipbone. His thumb ring made a shivery contrast with the supple skin of his palm.

Alec drew him forward by their joined hands, to lay his mouth on Magnus's shoulder, sternum, each nipple in turn. His free arm went around Magnus, to hold him close as he murmured something breathless into Alec's tousled hair.

After a long moment, Magnus ducked free. His mouth bruised from their kisses, his eyes coming back to focus, he made Alec's heart hammer. Alec barely stopped himself from bucking up as Magnus's palms splayed over his stomach. Magnus traced the shape of a rune above his hip with attention that he didn't usually afford the markings.

"Has anyone told you what a marvel you are?" The words seemed to land hard and then dissolve into simmering heat under his skin before Alec had quite recovered from that first impact.

"Not lately, no." He couldn't get all the way to wry, but managed a lopsided grin.

"Then I imagine I'll have to." Magnus's deft fingers slid down between his thighs. Alec shifted his legs as wide as Magnus's knees around them allowed.

"I'm, ah, I'm listening," he said against Magnus's mouth.

The kiss unfolded choppily, in damp presses of lips and teeth, a counterpoint to the steady strokes of Magnus's touch. He painted the juncture of Alec's leg and body, then wound a silkily certain grip around the base of his cock. Alec twisted back, breaking the kiss, moaning out loud. Falling onto his elbows, he let his head hang back.

"Magnus." It sounded like pleading. "You know—oh—you keep that up and I'm not gonna— _god_."

Magnus had pinned the head of his cock between two fingers, the silver band of a ring a sleek, cold tease on the flushed skin. He swirled a fingertip over the tip. Words went blurry in Alec's mind.

"Such a little thing, undoing all of you," Magnus said, as if this were a profound discovery.

"Wasn't that your _plan_?" Alec husked.

That seemed to distract Magnus from his musing. "Yeah." He kissed Alec's burning cheek, absurdly gentle after his meticulous teasing. "Speaking of plans, shall we get to the point?"

For all that they'd done in bed—and analogous places—Alec felt a late skitter of nerves. The last time they'd done this, fucked in the narrow sense of the word, had been in the aftermath of Valentine's massacre. Half-dazed with grief and floating on their shared admissions on the Institute steps, they'd at last found their way to Alec's bedroom.

It'd been rushed and feverish, all grasping hands and crushed mouths. He came roughly, too soon, and fumbled down to suck Magnus off, coasting on that same trembling swell.

They'd lain still for a long time afterwards, bodies wrapped in one another, weary and heartsore, but together.

The memory flickered back to Alec, in impressions overlaid on the present. He remembered the overwhelming closeness, both of them too fraught with unwinding emotion to pretend. This, the intimate work of opening Magnus up with his fingers, the kisses Magnus plied his mouth with, fingers hard in Alec's hair as the rest of him relaxed into his lap, had a more dissonant undertone.

A lock of his hair snagged on one of Magnus's rings. Magnus worked it free, his breath hissing with concentrating. "Sorry."

Alec shook his head, meaning _don't worry about it_ , and curled his fingers so that Magnus threw his head back and clenched around his hand. Magnus groped along the heaped bedding, there was the snick of a cap opening, and then he let his slick-smooth palm glide up Alec's cock.

Quite by accident, Alec bit into Magnus's shoulder. At least that choked the moan that rose inescapably from him, becoming a needy huff of air against Magnus's skin.

"Fuck. Right, message received. Get on with it."

"It wasn't meant so harshly," Magnus muttered, like he didn't have any more voice left than Alec did.

Alec tried to peel back Magnus's tone, unsure what'd pinged him about it. _I am sure if you are._ Oh, Alec had been sure.

Magnus broke his confusion by scooting forward. Alec reached for him, his breath catching with anticipation that swept all other thought aside. The tendons in Magnus's neck moved under sweat-streaked skin that bloomed with the marks of Alec's earlier kisses. Bracing himself in Alec's grip, Magnus took him in, in a single purposeful motion, only a shiver in his muscles betraying the effort.

"Oh." Alec should've been ready. He'd known how Magnus would feel around him and he still shook with the actuality of it, his eyes squeezing shut. "Maybe—maybe one day I'll get used to this."

"I almost wish you wouldn't." Magnus's fingers roamed over his stomach. "I'd get to see your face like this, again and again." The dreamy distance in his voice clashed with the stark reality of him there.

Alec laughed raggedly. His hands spasmed. Magnus shifted, not quite riding him so much as grinding down in shallow movements, and drew a shaky, gritty breath through his nose.

 _I'm here._ Alec bit back the words. _You can take what you need from me._ He stroked over the swell and fall of Magnus's ribs, down his arms in half-blind caresses. His fingers met the knob of the ulna at Magnus's wrist and spanned it where it was thinnest, thumb to forefinger over the pulse point.

Between one blink and the next, his arms thumped to the bed on either side of his head. Reflexively he arched upward against Magnus, who was leaning over him, with a grip of his arms just above the elbow. His skin hummed with a prickling heat. His mind swung between lust and puzzlement.

"Stay." It didn't fall like a whole sentence, but Magnus didn't go on. He rose upright, and Alec let up an unwitting, strangled groan at the motion. 

Something had changed. It ran like a fine fracture through the mirror-pane of the moment, visible only when turned the right way. Alec watched Magnus draw his teeth over his lip, a gesture that'd have sped up his heart in another moment.

"Okay." Alec swallowed. His knees folded tighter, jostling Magnus forward. "Okay."

Magnus made a face Alec didn't know how to parse, hazed with want and apprehension as he was, and let his head drop forward. Alec burrowed his fingers into a pillow, as Magnus slid up and nearly off him and back down again. His hand fisted around the necklace he still wore, as if at a loss for something to grasp. Words formed on his tongue, throaty and heavy.

They came out only as moans speckled in between his breaths. His left hand set on Alec's thigh, Magnus began building a pace: rolling shifts that tore harsh breaths from Alec's chest and made him struggle to hold still.

His body clamored to thrust into the motions. Each squeezing tug on his cock burned low in his stomach, a pulse of fire that seared away his misgivings. The glimpses he had of Magnus fed the urgency: the thick curve of his cock, ignored for now; the black flutter of his lashes; the play of muscles under his skin as he moved on Alec, beautiful and taut and hungry.

And it was good. It was good because it was _Magnus_ and it'd been way too long. Alec had been able to sideline the yearning as long as fulfilling it seemed impossible—as long as he doubted he had the _right_ to yearn in the first place. He had plenty of practice at that. But as the distance between them eroded, so did his own walls.

If this was how that distance would close, he'd take it. He'd take Magnus any way he could. The thought had sides like fish scales: smooth one way, rasping the other. He wished Magnus would look up. Open the bitten-shut line of his mouth. Say his name.

Magnus trembled. His grip dug bruises into Alec's leg, and his cock jerked against his stomach. "Ah. Ah, fuck."

It was the strung-wire strain in his voice that undid Alec's acquiescence. He flexed his fingers, buried in the pillows, and went to lay a palm on Magnus's forearm. "Uh. Are you—"

A snap of force flung his hand to the side, the air sparking in his vision. Alarm kicked in and flooded him with clarity, trained instinct gearing him to respond to the threat—

No. No. He was aware of Magnus slipping off him, and of the bed dipping next to him under a stagger of movement.

"Magnus?" Alec scrambled up to sit.

His first answer was a breath pulled in through set teeth. Magnus sat bent over his raised knees, his posture a ragged protection. His hand over his mouth almost smothered his words. "I'm sorry."

Magnus hadn't touched him, Alec realized, though he was well capable of pinning Alec down if he cared to. A whiplash of magic had repelled his attempt at... whatever he'd tried to do. Retie the easy thread of communication he'd grown used to during sex. Reach Magnus, who'd receded in a moment that should've knit their separation.

 _Stay here, Alec_ , he admonished himself. _Because what the_ shit _just happened?_

"Hey," he began, before the silence severed all chance he had. "What's going on? Did I do something?"

He hadn't, had he? He'd thought that was the _point_.

Magnus's eyes rose to him, wide with barefaced consternation. "Alexander."

"Yeah?"

Magnus controlled his expression, the anguished slant of his mouth flattening. "It's not you. I started this, and I ruined it."

They'd been here before: the very first time, when Magnus had shied away after his glamour faltered. Maybe also after their first actual date, when Alec had nearly walked out the door.

"Uh, let's not talk like something's wrecked?" Alec stuffed aside his dismay at how unequipped he was for this. Also, naked and coming down hard from a steep slope of confused lust. Defiantly he sat up straight. "You pushed me away. There's a reason, right?"

"To state the obvious." Magnus clearly couldn't muster a drop of wit. His fingers drummed on the sheet, stretched tight between them. "I am sorry."

"For?" Alec had to prompt.

"If I use magic on somebody without their consent, they'd better be in mortal danger, or an enemy."

That was—both pointedly true and more than a little melodramatic, considering magic seemed to be like a limb or a sense to Magnus: an inherent, instinctual part of him. A thing he'd resort to in reaction, without conscious thought.

"Magnus. It's not like you hurt me." Alec wasn't sure if he should argue, but not arguing meant accepting this vaguely sinister, defeatist version of what had happened. "Remember that time I elbowed you in the nose? Because there was blood, I'm pretty sure."

That should've at least got him a chuckle. Magnus shook his head, though he didn't avert his eyes. "It's not the same. You know it's not." He looked frighteningly sincere, in contrast to his usual changeable veneer.

"What, because for fifteen seconds you weren't thinking of me first?" Alec blurted out. "You never stopped me from talking. I never asked you to stop." 

"Yes, and as we all know, you are a paragon of healthy self-interest." Drying sweat glossed Magnus's cheek, which dented as he bit into it. Alec wanted to slap himself for the way the first of those details pulled at him. "I wanted you to distract me. I wanted to—well, whatever I wanted, it wasn't this."

Alec clicked his tongue in poorly hidden frustration. Magnus was circling something, the real source of this perturbation, and he needed to poke it, preferably gently. He let himself fall back onto the bed, one arm splayed above his head. "You wanted me. That was real. I hope."

"Alec," Magnus said, somewhat helplessly. Then, softly, "Yeah."

"That's a relief."

The silence had begun to spread into awkward territory by the time Magnus spoke again, unbudged from his crouched position. With him, such stillness always meant something. "I needed to remember that I don't blame you. And that—that I'm capable of feeling all the things I used to for you. That I still feel them."

Alec barely kept a pang of dread from his face, canting his head away and making himself inhale firmly. _Don't jump to conclusions. Listen._ "Okay."

"I was grateful for the space." Magnus sniffed. "But it wasn't going to work as a permanent arrangement."

"Nope," Alec allowed. "Just as long as you needed it."

"Who told you you could get lippy with me?" Magnus cast his eyes to the ceiling. His tone bubbled with just a smidge of mirth, before sobering again. "What happened to me with Valentine, and at the Institute afterwards, there's no excuse for it. It was an act of cruelty. But not one instigated by you."

Tension screwed itself tighter into Alec's spine with every word. "I didn't listen to you. That fucking well makes me complicit."

"After Valentine had manipulated you and people you care about, over and over." Magnus grasped his own wrist, twisting his grip around it.

"If you give me some variation of 'I've had worse' now, I'll... I don't even know. Just don't."

"I have had worse, Alexander," Magnus said, in the _I've lived for four hundred years and I'm about to remind you_ voice. "That doesn't make this time better."

Alec sat up, a thousand squirming intentions trying to claim his attention. "Look. I know this is a mess. I know if you had any sense you'd refuse to talk to any Shadowhunter in New York ever again. Even me. Sure." He let his hand flex into a fist, but uncurled it again. "And I told you I was sorry, and I still am, and that's just words, anyway."

Magnus rubbed another fractional circle over his wrist. "Then my good sense must not be all I like to pretend, as we're still talking."

Alec followed the motion of his hand. Magnus had a couple of subtle nervous tics, but if this was another, he hadn't witnessed it before.

"I wish you'd stop being kind about all that," he said, "but I don't. Because I want to help you. I want there to be a chance for us. If that's selfish, maybe I'm not as big of a bleeding heart as you like to tell me I am."

" 'The quality of mercy is not strained'," Magnus said quietly. "I try to remember that, too."

A little shiver passed over Alec, a reminder that they were settled haphazardly on the bed, the air cool against their stillness. The half-turned blinds sieved misty stripes of sunlight onto the floor and the rumpled linens.

"I wake up," Magnus went on, before Alec had found a reply, "and feel those straps around my wrists. Other warlocks have different methods, but I use my hands."

"Oh, god." The pieces fell together. Every time Alec had put a hand on Magnus's wrist, he'd flinched. Steered him otherwise, until that last time. "I'm sorry, I'm going to..." Any words he could think of slumped into nonsense, so he leaned forward until he could bow his temple to Magnus's shoulder. "I mean, if you don't—"

Hesitant, or maybe cautious, Magnus's fingers touched Alec's hair. The heel of his palm pressed against his ear. "It's all right."

Alec sighed. The angle was awkward; he wouldn't have moved for the world. They leaned into one another, heads together, each breathing at his pace.

"I was serious about the crepes," Magnus said, "and about keeping you, too."

"I'm never gonna live that down, am I?" Alec allowed his voice to come as small as it would.

"It depends. You could probably bribe me with further breakfasts."

It wasn't a wholly—or even mostly—happy laugh that slipped free from Alec, rasping into the air, too hoarse to fill it. There was more than a little of hurt and relief in it, and a jot of leftover nerves, but Magnus carded his fingers deeper into his hair, so that seemed to be okay. Alec nosed the ridge of Magnus's clavicle, the skin there warmed by his breaths.

"That's a pretty good deal."

Magnus turned to face Alec. He slid his hands over Alec's shoulders, skimming the back of his neck, the hollow of his spine, as far down as he could reach by gradually crowding close.

With a jolt, Alec realized he'd kind of forgotten their mutual lack of clothing. The halting conversation had gouged too deep for him to care, and even now, Magnus pressing against him woke only a warm heaviness in him.

"That reminds me," Magnus said, "that we technically have some unfinished business."

 _That_ did startle a small noise out of Alec. He salvaged it into an inquiring hum. "You can put it on my tab. I'm good for it."

"I know you are." Magnus danced a finger along the lee of Alec's shoulder-blade. It was a tender touch more than a persuasive one, but it made Alec curve into it, into the shape of Magnus's open hand. "We could also settle it now."

"We didn't really put this in the terms," Alec mumbled, "but I've got a condition."

"That's bold of you, since I fulfilled my part, but yours could be argued to be outstanding." Magnus dropped his voice as if to mimic Alec, sighing as Alec finally wound his arm around him. It still fit there.

"I want to be able to kiss you." The same way, his thumb fit under Magnus's lower lip, a point of feathery pressure. Magnus closed his eyes with a couple of partway blinks.

"You'd better, or the deal's off."

That first kiss felt fragile as spun glass. Magnus let Alec come to him, put his lips to his cheek and scatter a path to his mouth, as if they needed the preamble. Alec fell into it notch by notch, each gasping breath through the kiss another excuse to dwell. Setting a hand on his chest, Magnus switched the angle, bending down to Alec for the simple pleasure of the opportunity.

It'd more properly been half a dozen kisses before they drew back, mouths dark, eyes straying back to each other. A flash of gold under Magnus's lashes, certainly willful, was enough for Alec's cock to stir languidly.

"The whole time," Alec insisted, his hand again in Magnus's hair, which was starting to look dangerously disheveled.

"Then I suggest we don't move too much. Though you may want the headboard at your back." Sure it was logistics. In that timbre of voice, Magnus could've been reading the duty roster at the Institute and Alec would've lost his breath.

"Yeah." He pulled Magnus along across the bed.

* * *

It wasn't long before Magnus broke Alec's condition. Alec had to excuse him, since he did it by squirming down to kiss the insides of Alec's thighs and run spit-slickened fingers up his swelling cock.

Desire surged across them both in a steep cloudy current. Alec's fingers gripped and stroked Magnus's hair in turns, unable to keep still; Magnus took Alec's cock in his mouth, licked the bitter damp from the tip, and kissed the salt and heat of him into Alec's mouth again.

When Magnus grasped his hand to coat his fingers in lube, Alec looped an arm around his waist to keep him steady, then took as much time loosening him up as they both could bear. Their disjointed kisses softened the noises that neither of them could keep down. At last Magnus bucked into Alec's hand, the fingers knuckle-deep in him, and gasped a demand Alec had to obey.

After a few false starts, they found a deep, sinuous rhythm, driven as much by the loose wild want as the lingering pace of their touches. Alec leaned after Magnus, groaning at their mouths parting; they stayed there, the kiss slow and raw and breathtaking. Alec made a trembling fist at Magnus's hip so as not to come from it alone.

There was an urgency, but it built silty-slow, buried under the layers of this newfound intimacy. Alec let his mind drift, tethered by Magnus's weight in his lap and his arms around his neck. His skin slid against Alec's own on every pliant push and pull. Minutes passed uncounted.

Until Magnus, his hand wide above Alec's drumming heart, murmured into his ear, "Fuck, you feel splendid, but—harder. Please. I need you."

The rough entreaty wrenched at him. Magnus had a habit of talking all through sex, encouragement, reassurance, appreciation, nudging Alec when he got mired in his own head. He'd never heard Magnus quite like that.

"You have me. I'm yours."

He didn't think he'd meant to voice it. Magnus inhaled, sharp and startled, and moaned the muffled shape of his name.

"Hang on," he warned, since Magnus seemed preoccupied, and shuffled to the side of the pillows at the headboard. Magnus fell onto his back and clung to Alec as he sank inside him again.

It was a messy, glorious way to finish. Alec fought to make it last, to draw out his thrusts even when each sent a hissing curl of sensation through him. Magnus pressed a heel tight to his back, claiming his mouth for a stubborn kiss that couldn't stem the heady purpose of their movements anymore.

"Mine," Magnus said, low and dazed, but there was a glimmer in his slitted eyes. "You _are_ trying to kill me, no?" A little beyond words, Alec instead buried himself as deep as he could. "Oh. Oh, yes."

Maybe it was the wayward amusement in Magnus, or the way he dragged his hands down Alec's back, that did it. A shudder throbbed along his spine.

"Magnus," he gasped. "I'm gonna, babe, I—"

The orgasm was more of a fall than a crest, as if whatever he'd felt before had already been so euphoric, so bone-rattling, that all that remained was the sweet sharp drop at the end. Then Magnus's hips rose up, his arms trembling around Alec, his body arching into him. He came before Alec had the presence of mind to even touch his cock, with a breathy, exultant moan against Alec's neck.

It was like they'd slipped out of time: the pleasure abated in sticky slow waves. Magnus slotted a hand into Alec's. Alec lingered inside him, both of them sunken in each other, breathing as one.

They rolled apart enough for Alec to duck his head under Magnus's chin, Magnus's fingers stroking idly across the nape of his neck.

"I... whoa." It seemed his body was tardy to remember itself. He felt unwound, sprawled carelessly on the sheets with the faintest dabs of October sun from the window warming him. "Does it—could it—always feel like that? Or is it just you?"

"Well. I can say you ask the thorniest pillow talk questions I've heard in centuries." Magnus hummed. "Though I'll take that one as a compliment on my performance."

"It _is_ a compliment," Alec said. "Though you told me not to think of it as a performance."

"Save me, too, from nosy young men with overly keen memories," Magnus grumbled, not the least bit credibly, to the ceiling. "I suppose we have a few weeks' worth of rambling post-coital chats to catch up on, too."

Alec breathed in the fresh sweat and fragrant soap in Magnus's skin, undercut by the metallic tang the necklace chain had rubbed into the side of his neck. Familiar, calming smells. He wondered if his own nearness settled Magnus in some way, too. He figured that it did. Maybe they would make it through this.

Magnus sidled down for a kiss, open-mouthed and careful. Alec looked at him and let himself hope. "Yeah, we do. Can't wait."

When Magnus laughed, his nose pressed into Alec's cheek, Alec thought their chances were pretty good.

_end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are very much appreciated. ♥
> 
> Pretty much all of this fic was written to "Conrad" by Ben Howard, though you might have to squint to make the lyrics fit as a whole. Inspiration is weird.


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